Vitamin D

[Borderscotch]

Seen lots of info on vitamin D but not sure what I should be looking for in a supplement, what amount etc. Can anyone help. I did Google but confused myself

Thank you @dementedpixie

I just wanted to come back to this thread and thank OP and pp for the useful information/links.

I paid £30 for the blood spot test and just got the result (slow turnaround time!). My level came out as 83 nmol.

I'm not really sure where this leaves me but I'm relieved to see that I'm not terribly deficient. I do spend a lot of time outdoors in summer and have been supplementing with the basic 400ui since the start of October so obviously that has been making some difference.

The day after I sent my test off I upped my supplement to 4000ui but I now don't know if that's far too much, so more reading for me to do!

NewShoes... that's a good result, but i'd go a bit higher to 100 +
Download the DMinder app to your phone and input how much you take each day (I think it's free during the pandemic period, otherwise it's only about £1.99) and with your recent test it will accurately track your ongoing estimated levels and keep you on track to your goal.

4000 units is absolutely fine for almost everyone and is the upper recommended amount from the NHS. (unless you have certain conditions like sarcoidosis, williams syndrome, chronic kidney disease etc... check with your doc about any other conditions you're concerned about, but stress that you're interested in the full immunological dose, and not just that for protecting musculo-skeletal health). People think that vitamin D is like paracetamol in that there's a dangerous cut off point not far above the recommended dose, but in fact people take 10k, 25k, 40k per day and they've been fine... not recommended though unless you're taking a very short term loading dose or on recommendation from a doctor. Someone did once massively overdose... they realised they had been taking their vit D in milligrams instead of micrograms, so over by a factor of a thousand over a period of time... they had to get medical attention and monitoring, but they were fine afterwards.